


Just another day

by slugmutt



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, POV Original Character, speeder chases, sucks to be Carl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-27 01:46:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18188195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slugmutt/pseuds/slugmutt
Summary: Carl couldn’t help but notice that the woman was very pretty, and the man was more than a little scary-looking. And also, that they were both holding blasters, and that there were two other workers slumped unconscious at their feet.Unfortunately, by the time his brain had processed all of that, the man had aimed a blaster at his head.





	Just another day

 

Carl cursed as he checked his watch, and forced himself to walk faster. As if his life wasn’t banthashit already, now he was going to be late. And Vredic was already looking for a reason to fire him, he just knew it.

He swerved, heading down the small back alley to his right. The back roads behind the factory were beyond filthy, but today he couldn’t afford to be picky. He needed to get to work, and fast.

Not that working as a security guard for Czerka was his dream job or anything. But he needed the credits. Especially now, with the way things were with Stella. He needed to show her that she was wrong, that he did know how to treat a lady. And for that, he would need his whole salary and then some…

He was so busy thinking about his recently-ex-girlfriend that it took him a moment to realize that he wasn’t alone. Two factory workers stood just meters ahead of him, their hoods off. Carl couldn’t help but notice that the woman was very pretty, and the man was more than a little scary-looking. And also, that they were both holding blasters, and that there were two other workers slumped unconscious at their feet.

Unfortunately, by the time his brain had processed all of that, the man had aimed a blaster at his head. He just had time to think, “oh force, I’m going to – “

And then the man’s partner pushed his arm aside. “We’ll bring him with us,” she said. Ordered. “You, over here.”

Somehow, Carl managed to obey, even though his legs felt like they had turned to jelly. He stood silently, his head buzzing, as the pretty woman unsnapped the blaster from his belt, frowned at it in disapproval, tossed it aside, and then shoved him into a nearby airspeeder. He watched silently as she dove into the driver’s seat and began ripping out wires and twisting them back together in new patterns. When he looked out the window for her partner, he realized the man was somehow already in the passenger’s seat.

The woman got the engine going just as an ear-shattering alarm sounded from within the building. Carl could just barely hear her over the sound of the siren as she let out a string of curses that would have given his mother a heart attack.

And then they were off, speeding down the alley so fast it felt like they were about to jump into hyperspace.

“What in the name of all the hells do you think you’re doing?” the man snarled. Carl flinched at the fury in his voice.

“I’m getting us out of here,” the woman said, steering them over a pile of scrap metal and then taking a sudden turn, throwing them all to the right. Carl whimpered as he careened against the window, and then slammed back into the seat.

Then he whimpered again as he heard the unmistakable sound of laser fire from behind them. Kriff, they were all going to die, weren’t they?

“With him,” the man said, sounding completely unphased by their imminent death. And still furious. “He’s worthless as a hostage.”

“I know that,” the woman snapped, so offended that she took her eyes off the airway ahead of them to glare at her partner. She looked back just in time to swerve around an office building. Carl swallowed back bile.

“Are you planning to bring him back to base as a pet?”

The woman clenched her jaw and didn’t answer. From somewhere deep inside himself, Carl found the courage – or maybe the stupidity – to stammer out, “Umm… I was going to work, if…”

The man turned to glare at him. Carl felt another whimper of terror start to work its way out his throat, only to die halfway.

“You didn’t even gag him,” the man said, as they took another sharp turn right, merging into a stream of mid-air traffic winding its way through the factory district. He was speaking more softly, now, but somehow his voice was no less terrifying.

The woman jerked the wheel, sending them right again and then somehow spiraling down, so fast and so low that Carl was sure that in another two seconds they would be nothing but a smear of blood and broken metal on the pavement. “Did it look to you like I had time to gag him?” she said, pulling them up at the last second. She pushed the vehicle to maximum speed, until the buildings turned to a blur around them. Carl willed himself not to throw up. Not that he cared, at this point, but he had a feeling the man wouldn’t like it.

For a long moment, the only sounds in the car were the whir of the air, the screaming of metal on metal as the woman took them dangerously close to buildings, and the fading scream of sirens behind them.

“You don’t have to do it,” the man said softly. Gently. “I’ll take care of it.”

“At what cost?” she asked, taking a split-second left turn that threw Carl to the floor.

The man let out a long breath that sounded more sad than irritated. “I can handle it.”

“No.”

Scary Man shot his partner an incredulous look. “I’m not jeopardizing the mission for – “

“Quiet,” she snapped, as the speeder jerked to the left, down another alley. And then, “Hold on.”

Carl had just enough time to grab the seat ahead of him before they were twisting, and falling, and the world around him turned to a blur of dirt and sky.

When he came back to himself, they seemed to be underground. Scary Man and the woman were out of the speeder already, and standing toe to toe, trading furious whispers.

Carl managed to pull himself from the speeder, too, just in time to empty the contents of his stomach onto the concrete.

When he finished, he stood on shaking legs. He didn’t want to hear what they were saying, not really. He realized, now, that they were talking about whether or not to kill him. He almost wished the man had just shot him back at the factory. It might have been easier if he hadn’t had time to understand that he was going to die.

But he couldn’t help but overhear their whispered argument.

“ – if you would just listen for a second, Cass – “

“Great,” the man named Cass said, pulling at his hair. “Now he knows my name.” He pulled his blaster out again, but the woman shoved it down.

“I said I can do it – “

“Damn it all, would you just _listen_ – “

“It’s OK.” They both blinked in shock, and it took Carl a moment to realize that the voice was his. He took a shaking breath. “I – it’s not much of a life, really. My girlfriend just left me, I’m definitely going to get fired, and my brother – “ He paused. He hadn’t planned to get this far, really, he’d assumed that one or both of them would either interrupt him or shoot him by now. “You’re rebellion, right?” he let himself ask. They said nothing, which was all the confirmation he needed. “My brother was on Alderaan, and his wife. And my baby nephew,” he managed to say past the lump in his throat. He supposed it didn’t matter anymore whether or not he cried, but for some strange reason, he found himself wanting these people to think he was brave. He found himself wanting to be brave. “Do what you have to do,” he managed, and then held his breath, hoping they would do it quickly.

The woman looked bizarrely pleased. The man looked devastated. He looked at his partner. “I don’t want to kill him,” he whispered, as if he were confessing a shameful secret.

“It’s OK, Cass, I have a solution.” The man called Cass looked more hopeful than Carl would have thought. It made him feel good, knowing Cass would prefer not to kill him.

She looked between the two of them. “Look away for a minute.” She started taking off her shirt before he could fully process her command, and he caught a glimpse of pale skin over lithe muscle before whipping his head away. Scary Man – Cass – looked ready to kill him just for that.

“You can look,” she said, a second later. When they looked back, she was holding a vial of something dark purple and oddly beautiful, something that glittered even in the dim light.

Cass squinted at the vial. “Is that – “

“Glitteryll,” she said, triumphantly. “Mixed with a bit of tranquilizer strong enough for a Wookie. We give our boy some of this, he feels at one with the universe for a few minutes, passes out, and wakes up with no memory of the past five hours.”

That was a good solution, Carl thought. Even Cass looked impressed. Impressed, and angry again.

“Is this what you fought those gangsters for on Ord Mantell?” he asked, frowning.

Her eyes shifted from his to the vial in her hand. “Maybe.”

“Damn it, Jyn,” he said with feeling. “You can’t – that is not even _close_ to being a good enough reason to nearly get yourself gutted by a man the size of a purrgil – “

“He was wookie-sized at best, and that knife barely touched me,” Jyn shot back, with a glare that would have sent men far braver than Carl running for cover.

Cass just glared back. “It wasn’t worth it,” he said. Carl supposed he should be offended, but he couldn’t help but agree. If Stella had ever tried to fight one of the lowlifes from Ord Mantell… But then, Stella would never have faced a danger like that for his sake in a million years. He wasn’t entirely sure she’d have been willing to face a hangnail for him.

Jyn somehow managed to look even angrier. “Look me in the eye and tell me you could shoot that man – “ she flung an arm in Carl’s direction, her eyes still on her partner’s “- and just walk away. Tell me that wouldn’t fuck you up.”

“Fine, you’re right, it would fuck me up. But I don’t need you to – to risk your life, to protect me. I can handle it.”

“I can’t,” she said, and for a second, Carl saw Cass look genuinely surprised. He had a feeling it was a rare thing, seeing that look on that face. “I can’t handle it, OK?”

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, you nerf-brain, that when you suffer, the people who love you suffer too!”

They both went quiet, eyes locked on each other.

“You – “ Scary Man finally started to say, just as she said, “You’re not alone, Cassian. You have people who care about you.” She tilted her chin up as if looking for a fight. “I care about you. A lot. So if it takes getting in a fight or two to keep you from suffering I will damn well do that, and don’t you _dare_ try to tell me it isn’t worth it, because – “

“Jyn,” the man said, taking a step closer.

“ – and don’t try to pretend that you wouldn’t do the same for me, because I know – “

“ _Jyn_ ,” he cut her off. “Can I… “ If Carl didn’t know better he would say Scary Man – Cassian – looked nervous. But that was ridiculous; if the past ten minutes hadn’t scared him, nothing could. “I would like to kiss you.”

Oh. OK. He could see how trying to start with Terrifying Woman could be more frightening even than their speeder ride.

She didn’t look terrifying now, though. She looked pleased, and maybe a little nervous herself, and something else, too, some other emotion he couldn’t name.

And then she leaned in, and Cassian leaned in, and suddenly Carl figured it out. Love. That was the emotion. He watched as the two embraced, seemingly oblivious to his existence. Cassian kissed her as if he was trying to express a lifetime of emotion in a single moment; Jyn kissed him back as if commanding him to stay with her.

He had never felt even a third of that for Stella. He doubted she’d ever felt one-tenth as much for him.

He looked away, suddenly overwhelmed by their affection. And also more than a little afraid that Cassian would change his mind about killing him if he saw Carl watching him kiss his girlfriend.

He didn’t notice when they pulled apart, or when they approached him. He only noticed when Jyn took his arm, her movements far more gentle than he would have expected.

“It’s not going to hurt,” she said. “And we’ll even give you the chip we took, as soon as we make a copy.”

Carl felt a lump rising in his throat again. “I won’t remember any of this,” he said.

“No,” Cassian confirmed, his voice oddly sympathetic.

He sighed. “Shame, that.” And then the world went black.

 

Carl cursed as he checked his watch, and forced himself to walk faster.

He woke up in a medbay two days later, and discovered that he was a hero. Apparently, he’d fought a pair of rebel infiltrators single-handedly, and had managed to recover a very valuable data chip that they had almost stolen.

The head of security at Czerka herself came to thank him, and to offer him a promotion. Stella messaged him to see if he’d like to meet up sometime. It was definitely the most amazing thing that had happened to him in his life.

It was too bad that, as he told them all over and over, he couldn’t remember any of it.

(That wasn’t entirely true. He had a few disjointed memories, each stranger than the last. For some reason, he decided the troopers and the heads of security at Czerka didn’t need to know about them.)

He surprised himself by turning down the promotion they offered him. Czerka’s work just didn’t sit well with him. Hadn’t for a long time, he realized, even before Alderaan. He took a job at BlasTech instead. It meant moving all the way out to Druckenwell, but Carl found he didn’t mind. Even though it meant giving up on Stella. He found himself thinking that maybe that was for the best. Maybe they could both do better.

*

Half a galaxy away, Jyn stood and stretched. “Good game,” she said. “I’m going to go look over the medkit, make a list of what we need to pick up while we’re planetside.”

“I’ll help,” Cassian offered casually, rising to follow her. They disappeared into the back of the ship.

Bodhi sighed as he set up the board again. “Those two are not even a little bit subtle,” he griped.

“No, they are not,” Kaytoo agreed, turning down his auditory sensors as a precaution.

The ship sped on, bringing them home.


End file.
